NIN News
June 2009
Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience
N I N C e n t e nni a l
A hundred?
‘Indeed it feels like yesterday that I gave a similar speech at
the opening of the NIN. As a theoretical physicist I can tell you
that Einstein’s theory of relativity allows for this (...)’ , as Robbert
­Dijkgraaf, president of our ‘proud parent’ the KNAW said in his
opening speech of the symposium on 12 June.
‘Perhaps in retrospect, the early
visions of those days were a bit
naive. It’s very difficult to think of
DNA or fMRI in 1909. Just as one
will probably wonder in the year
2109 how we could possibly try
to understand the brain without
a quantum interference neuron
spectrometer. One thing is clear:
understanding the brain and
cognition in all its complexities
will be a crucial central theme, if
not the central theme in science
of the coming century. This was
true in 1909 but I think it’s even
more true in 2009.’
In fact we just celebrated the one hundredth birthday of the
Central Institute for Brain Research. It has recently evolved into
NIN, together with the Netherlands Ophthalmic Research Institute, as was pointed out by our director Pieter Roelfsema in his
introductory historical overview.
extensively on the front page of the ‘Algemeen Handelsblad’ of
8 June 1909. From the start, the institute was internationally
oriented and it hosted many foreign guest researchers, with
Kappers himself spending time as a visiting professor at many
foreign universities, such as Beijing Union Medical College (1923)
and Beirut (1928). His life’s work has been taken down in his twovolume book, The comparative anatomy of the nervous system of
vertebrates, including man (MacMillan 1936, co-authors Crosby
and Huber), which is still in use (...)’. ‘Professor Ariëns Kappers
received many prizes and was awarded honorary doctorates in
Glasgow, Dublin, Chicago and Yale. He died in 1946, at the age
of 68. His memoirs were not published until 2001.’ (C.U. Ariëns
Kappers, Reiziger in Breinen, ISBN9789020457032)
Organizers Michel Hofman and Dick Swaab had invited five renowned lecturers. Among them Frans de Waal, who would deliver
the 19th C.U. Ariëns Kappers lecture later that day. He received
the award from Dick Swaab: ‘We honour today two exceptional
scientists. ­C.U. Ariëns Kappers, who became the first director of
our institute one hundred years ago and whose main research
topic was comparative neurology and the evolution of the brain,
and the primatologist Dr. Frans de Waal, who has contributed
so much to our knowledge of the evolution of behaviour(...)’.
‘The Central Institute for Brain Research was the first institute
established in the Netherlands with the express purpose of
carrying out pure scientific research, as is stated, not without
pride, in speeches held during the opening, which was reported
NIN is an institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) NIN News · issue 3 · June 2009
‘Frans de Waal is the author
of numerous books, including Chimpanzee politics and
Our Inner Ape’, Dick Swaab
continued. ‘His research into
the innate capacity for empathy among primates has
led the Waal to the conclusion that humans are simply
different types of apes and
that there are little essential differences between the species. As
de Waal himself said: “I have argued that many of what philosophers called moral sentiments can be seen in other species. In
chimpanzees and other animals you see examples of sympathy,
empathy, reciprocicity and a willingness to follow social rules.
And to endow animals with human emotions had long been
a scientific taboo, but if we do not, we risk missing something
fundamental about animals and us.” (...)’
‘In 2007, de Waal was named one of Time Magazine’s one hundred most influential people. He has been elected to the National
Academy of Sciences of the USA, the American Academy of
Sciences and to the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). It is important to note that the experiments that
according to the standards of de Waal one is allowed to do with
hominids, are of a non-invasive nature, the type of experiments
one can do with human volunteers. This principle has certainly
contributed to the rapid translation of his experiments for human neuroscience.’
‘It’s a great honour for me to offer the
C.U. Ariëns Kappers medal this year
to professor Frans de Waal for
his extraordinary contribution
to the fields of primate behaviour and social psychology, that
has given such an original and
deep insight into our own behaviours and motivations.’
C.U. Ariëns Kappers Award Laureates
Pasco Rakic New Haven, USA, 1987
Anders Björklund Lund, SWE, 1988
Mortimer Mishkin Bethesda, USA, 1989
Robert Y. Moore New York, USA, 1991
Dale Purves Durham, USA, 1993
Joseph Takahashi Evanston, USA, 1995
Patricia S. Goldman Rakic New Haven, USA, 1996
Dean H. Hamer Bethesda, USA, 1999
Gerald M. Edelman San Diego, USA, 1999
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran San Diego, USA, 1999
Steven P.R. Rose Milton Keynes, GBR, 1999
Michael S. Gazzaniga Hanover, USA, 1999
Antonio R. Damasio Iowa City, USA, 1999
Rudolf Nieuwenhuys Amsterdam, NLD, 2000
Mark H. Tuszynski San Diego, USA, 2001
Dennis D.M. O’Leary La Jolla, USA, 2003
Clifford B.Saper Boston, USA, 2005
James Fawcett Cambridge, GBR, 2008
Frans B.M. de Waal Atlanta, USA, 2009
Organizer Michel Hofman had started the day by introducing the
lecturers and welcoming the guests. Among them were Robbert
Dijkgraaf, Theo Mulder and Robert Kaptein from KNAW, Nico
­Frijda, Jan van Hooff, Peter ­Hagoort, Henk Groenewegen, Arjen
Brussaard, Marian Joëls, Fernando Lopes da Silva, Ton Lohman,
Albert Verveen, Ron de Kloet, Peter Burbach, Walter van Emde
Boas, Netty van Lookeren Campagne, Pieter and Erik Ariëns Kappers, and Rudolf Nieuwenhuys, the latter also having attended
the 50th birthday in 1959 as a PhD student. J.H. Luo and Aimin
Bao came over from Hang Zhou, China.
Simon E. Fisher from Oxford, UK, a Royal Society research fellow, started the morning session with a beautiful lecture about
Molecular windows into speech and language. Fisher is a pioneer
in neurogenetics, having conducted the first large-scale scans
across all chromosomes of the genome for developmental dyslexia, language impairment and ADHD. He showed us that a
mutation in a regulatory gene, called FOXP2, causes an inherited
speech and language disorder. His research is the first to show
that a gene can be clearly linked to speech and language skills.
Ivanca Savic from Stockholm, Sweden, conducts research on the
neurobiology of the human limbic system including amygdala
and its projections with a special interest in sex differences
in these systems. Another research line concerns the cerebral
processing of odorous stimuli in humans in relation to sexual
orientation. She lectured on Cerebral activation and connectivity
in relation to sex and sexual orientation.
NIN is an institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) NIN News · issue 3 · June 2009
After Chris de Zeeuw, our project director, had thanked the
speakers and organizers, we all embarked on a canal cruise,
heading for the party at the ‘Rode Hoed’, where we had an excellent dinner accompanied by gypsy music. When the DJ started
to take care of the digestion of this fruitful day, we were happy
to see that some of our guest speakers took the floor to show
skills that were not restricted to the mind.
N I N K E Y P U B L I C AT I O N S
The afternoon saw a very lively presentation by Alcino J. Silva,
professor at UCLA, in which he unraveled molecular and cellular
mechanisms of memory allocation in neurocircuits seemingly
before our eyes. Dr. Silva and his group study the biology of
learning and memory with a focus on hippocampal/prefrontal
memory mechanisms. He studies molecular, cellular and circuit
processes that underlie the encoding, storage and recall of information in the brain.
Dean Falk from Florida State University, Tallahassee, USA is well
known for her work on the evolution of the brain and cognition
in higher primates, including humans, and the origin of language.
She is the author of Braindance: New Discoveries About Human
Origins and Brain Evolution (1992) and Primate Diversity (2000).
Falk linked the early days of our institute to important paleontological findings of the time before she gave her lecture on
Missing links, human brain evolution and paleopolitics.
Prosocial primates: empathy, fairness and cooperation was the
title of Frans de Waal’s lecture. ‘If you look at the United States:
we have a banking crisis, a financial crisis and actually Holland
had a major financial crisis also. People are very upset about the
big bonuses of the bankers. It is very interesting for me because
at the end I will say a few things about fairness and how my
monkeys react to unfair situations, which is exactly what’s happening in the US today. So greed is out, everywhere, empathy
and fairness are in.’ De Waal showed us wonderful movies of
monkeys, dogs and elephants, that were very moving indeed,
demonstrating more empathy, fairness and cooperation than
what we are used to.
He concluded: ‘Empathy and imitation are ancient capacities;
primates know cooperation and reciprocity, and cooperation
fosters sharing and concern for welfare of others and fairness’.
Allikmets, R., Bergen, A.A.B., Dean, M., Guymer, R.H., Hageman,
G.S., Klaver, C.C., Stefansson, K., Weber, B.H. and the international Age-related Macular Degeneration Genetics Consortium. Geographic atrophy in age-related macular degeneration
and TLR3. New Engl J Med. 360 (2009) 2252-4.
Klieverik, L.P., Janssen, S.F., Van Riel, A., Foppen, E., Bisschop, P.H.,
Serlie, M.J., Boelen, A., Ackermans, M.T., Sauerwein, H.P., Fliers,
E., and Kalsbeek, A. Thyroid hormone modulates glucose production via a sympathetic pathway from the hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus to the liver. PNAS 106 (2009) 5966-5971.
Koten, J.W., Wood, G., Hagoort, P., Goebel, R., Propping, P., Willmes,
K., and Boomsma, D.I. Genetic contribution to variation in
cognitive function: An fMRI study in twins. Science 323 (2009)
1737-1740.
Stöhr, H., Heisig, J.B., Benz, P.M., Schöberl, S., Milenkovic, V.M.,
Strauss, O., Aartsen, W.M., Wijnholds, J., Weber, B.H., and Schulz,
H.L. TMEM16B, a novel protein with calcium-dependent chloride channel activity, associates with a presynaptic protein
complex in photoreceptor terminals. Journal of Neuroscience
29 (2009) 6809-6818.
Van Leeuwen, M., Fahrenfort, I., Sjoerdsma, T., Numan, R., and
Kamermans, M. Lateral gain control in the outer retina leads
to potentiation of center responses of retinal neurons. Journal
of Neuroscience 29 (2009) 6358-6366.
Van Woerden, G.M., Hoebeek, F.E., Gao, Z., Nagaraja, R.Y.,
­Hoogenraad, C.C., Kushner, S.A., Hansel, C., De Zeeuw, C.I.,
and Elgersma, Y. βCaMKII controls the direction of plasticity
at parallel fiber-Purkinje cell synapses. Nature Neuroscience
12 (2009) 823-835.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Amsterdam International Medical Summer School, 5-31 July 2009
Exploring the brain from function to dysfunction
How do we see, do neurons regenerate, what happens when
we electrically stimulate the brain, and why do we need a hypothalamus?
This Summer School will focus on exciting recent progress in
medicine and neurosciences. The program will include lectures
on four major topics stretching from basal neuroscience to practical medicine, including visual perception, neurodegeneration,
neuromodulation and neuro-endocrinology.
Programme committee: P.A.J.P. Denys, E. Fliers, P.R. Roelfsema,
D.F.Swaab , and G.E.A. ten Have. http://www.amsu.edu/en/course/
exploring-the-brain-from-function-to-dysfunction-medic-1/
NIN is an institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) NIN News · issue 3 · June 2009
r e s e a r c h in f ocus
The Synapse and Network Development group started at the
NIN in April 2008. Christian Lohmann, the team leader, had previously worked in the department of Tobias Bonhoeffer at the
Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Munich. Team members
Friederike Siegel and Thomas Kleindienst came from Munich,
too, where they had started their PhD projects, which they will
now finish at the NIN.
0 sec
36 sec
‘Recently we discovered a new mechanism of how dendrites
select new synaptic partners, which we described in a Neuron
paper last year: Small dendritic processes establish contact with
axons and within a minute after a contact is formed they start
generating calcium signals. If the contacted axon is appropriate,
the calcium activity in the dendrite will be high and the contact
will become stabilized. It can then turn into a functional synapse.
If the axon is not an appropriate synaptic partner, however, little
calcium activity will be generated and eventually the dendrite
retracts, thereby breaking up the contact and the search for
synaptic partners continues.’
Ac a d e my C o l l o q uium
“Nutrition, Metabolism and the Brain”
3 µm
Figure 1. Left: live dendrites (orange) and axons
(green) labeled in a hippocampal slice.
Above: a dendrite contacts an axon.
‘We investigate how neurons establish specific functional contacts with each other during the development of the brain. We
use various types of microscopes, such as wide-field, confocal and
two-photon, to directly watch neurons contacting each other (Fig.
1) and selecting appropriate synaptic partners. Furthermore, we
visualize different forms of signaling in developing neurons, such
as synaptic activity and neurotrophin triggered signaling, by imaging changes in the intracellular calcium concentration. This can
even be done in live animals at single synapse resolution (Fig. 2).’
The main topic that we wished to emphasize during this Academy Colloquium is: The emerging role of the hypothalamus as a
crucial link between sensing nutrients and the control of insulin
sensitivity, glucose uptake, and glucose production.
The Academy Colloquium started of on Monday 11 May with a
Masterclass at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience. The
Masterclass was attended by ca 35 PhD students and consisted
of 4 presentations in the morning by the masters (i.e., a selection
of invited speakers at the colloquium) and 10 presentations by
PhD students in the afternoon. The students all acknowledged
the lively discussions and the devoted attention of the masters.
The colloquium itself (12-14 May) took place in the Trippenhuis
in the centre of Amsterdam and was opened by Robbert Dijkgraaf (President KNAW). On the three days, 17 presentations
were given by invited speakers, 13 presentations by authors of
selected abstracts and 15 poster presentations. In total about 100
clinicians and basic scientists from all over the world attended
the colloquium. The two responses pasted below very well represent the many positive reactions the organizing committee
received during and after the meeting: ‘I wanted to thank you
again for the meeting. It was really great’ and ‘Thanks very much
for inviting me to the meeting and all your hospitality while I
was there. It was an excellent meeting’.
Organizing committee: Dries Kalsbeek, Eric Fliers, Gertjan van
Dijk, Hanno Pijl, Susanne laFleur, Etienne Challet and Czaba
Nyakas.
Figure 2. Left: In vivo image of dendrites filled with a calcium
indicator. Right: Synaptic calcium transient recorded in a dendritic spine in the visual cortex of a young mouse.
NIN is an institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) NIN News · issue 3 · June 2009
D I S S ERTAT I O N S
12 March 2009
22 April 2009
Nathalie Koning
Imbalanced immunity in multiple sclerosis.
Sridhara Chakravarthy
Regulation of spine maintenance in the adult mouse visual
cortex by TrkB signaling.
Dick Swaab and René Van Lier (AMC), supervisors.
Inge Huitinga and Robert Hoek, co-supervisors.
Nathalie Koning started in 2004 with her PhD work at the NIN in
the Neuroimmunology Research group. Her research focused on
the immune suppressive mechanisms that control macrophages
and microglia in multiple sclerosis. She was funded by the Dutch
MS Research Foundation. Since October 2008, she works as a
post-doc in the group of Van Kooyk, Department of Molecular
Cell Biology and Immunology, VUmc.
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an inflammatory demyelinating disease
of the central nervous system (CNS). Crucial for the development
of MS lesions are highly activated macrophages and microglia.
The disproportional activation of these cells reflects an imbalanced immune regulation in the CNS, but it is unknown whether
this is due to enhanced activating signals, decreased inhibition
or a combination of both. Importantly, in the normal immuneprivileged CNS, powerful systems such as CD200-CD200R and
CD47-SIRPα interaction continuously suppress local immune
activities.
We have shown that expression of CD200 and CD47, but not of
their receptors on macrophages/microglia, was diminished in
MS lesions. These data indicate that decreased immune inhibition may contribute to a disturbed equilibrium in macrophage
and microglia activation in MS. Furthermore, we have shown
the cellular localization of CD200 and CD200R in the CNS, and
we addressed the regulation of CD200R on macrophages and
microglia. We suggest that targeting macrophages/microglia,
for example by enhancing CD200R signaling, could have an
important therapeutic potential and would be a new, unexplored
field in the treatment of MS.
Matthijs Verhage (VU), supervisor.
Christiaan Levelt, co-supervisor.
Sridhara Chakravarthy started in 2001 with his PhD work at
the NIN in the Molecular Visual Plasticity group. He worked on
the role of TrkB signaling in adult visual cortex. Since 2008 he
works as a post-doc in the group of Cohen-Cory, Department of
Neurobiology and Behavior, University of California, Irvine, USA.
The role of TrkB/BDNF-signaling in the developing and immature
brain is multifaceted. However, it has been difficult to study the
effects of BDNF in the intact adult brain, without influencing the
development of the brain. This thesis aims at elucidating the role
of TrkB signaling in adult cortical plasticity to answer some of
the following questions. What are the structural and functional
effects of inhibiting TrkB signaling in the adult cortex? Are these
effects different in a similar cell type from another brain area? Can
the pre- and post-synaptic effects of TrkB signaling be discerned?
Does TrkB signaling act as a competitive substrate for cortical
plasticity? What are the mechanisms that bring about these
effects? By generating transgenic mice expressing a dominant
negative TrkB-EGFP in isolated excitatory neurons of the adult
forebrain, we show that postsynaptic TrkB signaling is crucial
for the maintenance of synaptic strength in the mature visual
cortex but not in the hippocampus. However, spine maintenance
is not compromised in transgenic mice that express TrkB-EGFP
in a majority of excitatory neurons of the adult visual cortex,
although they receive reduced inhibitory input. We hypothesize
that synaptic maintenance by postsynaptic TrkB signaling is a
competitive process controlled by the inhibitory system which,
in turn, is triggered by population activity.
NIN is an institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) NIN News · issue 3 · June 2009
C ALE N DAR
13 July 2009
Lecture by Jonathan Victor (Weil Cornell Med Coll., NY, USA)
Information-theoretic analysis of neural data: why it is challenging,
and what can be learned
Faculty building Erasmus MC Rotterdam, Room Ae 406.
29 July – 1 August 2009
CogSci 2009 Vrije Universiteit
Plenary speakers: Susan Carey, Nicola Clayton, Stanislas Dehaene,
Randall O’Reilly, Joshua Tenenbaum.
www.ai.rug.nl/cogsci09
24 August 2009, 14:00 h
Swammerdam Lecture by Jeffrey Dalley (University of Cambridge, Cambridge,UK).
The behavioural neuroscience of impulsivity and compulsivity:
cross-species analysis. www.onwa.med.vu.nl
29 August – 1 September 2009
EMBO-Meeting Amsterdam 2009, RAI Amsterdam.
Organizers: Hans Clevers and Stephan West (UK)
www.the-embo-meeting.org
11 September 2009
Swammerdam Lecture by David Ginty (Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, USA)
Growth and survival signals controlling development of the peripheral nervous system
NIN colloquium room. Host: Joost Verhaagen.
www.onwa.med.vu.nl
17 September 2009, 10:00 h
Lars P. Klieverik will defend his thesis Thyroid hormone, ­Metabolism
and the Brain. Promotores: E. Fliers en H.P. S­ auwerwein.
Copromotores: A. Kalsbeek en M.T. Ackermans
UvA, Agnietenkapel.
17 September 2009, 13:00 h
Xtrack Symposium:
‘Buy or Sell!? The neurobiology behind decisions’
Uithof, Utrecht www.xtrack2009.com
21 September 2009, 20:00 h
Lecture by Dick Swaab: De evolutie van onze hersenen
Diligentia, Den Haag.
www.natuurwetenschappen-diligentia.nl
NIN News edited by
Jenneke Kruisbrink
Henk Stoffels
Chris De Zeeuw
Contact: news@nin.knaw.nl
7 October 2009
Swammerdam Lecture by David McCormick (Department of
Neurobiology, Yale University, New Haven, USA)
Cortical network dynamics
NIN colloquium room. Host: Christiaan Levelt
www.onwa.med.vu.nl
8-10 October 2009
European Retina Meeting 2009, Oldenburg, Germany.
Heads of the Scientific Organizing Committee: Reto Weiler and
Maarten Kamermans
www.retina-meeting.eu/content/internal.htm
9-11 October 2009
Fifth Cognition Autumn School
Doorwerth, Netherlands
From stimulus to understanding in perception and language
olthoff@fsw.leidenuniv.nl
30 October 2009, 15:00 h
Swammerdam Lecture by Carl Petersen (Ecole Polytechnique
Fédérale de Lausanne, Switserland).
Synaptic mechanisms of sensory perception
SILS - UvA www.onwa.med.vu.nl
2 November 2009
Lecture by Kristen Verhey (Univ Michigan, USA)
Road signs for kinesin motor transport
Faculty building Erasmus MC Rotterdam, Room Ae 406.
2 November 2009
Swammerdam Lecture by Gilles Laurent (Division of Biology,
Caltech, Pasadena, USA)
Dynamics and coding in an olfactory circuit
SILS - UvA www.onwa.med.vu.nl
19 November 2009
Swammerdam Lecture by Tim Tully (Dart Neuroscience LLC,
San Diego, CA, USA)
Enhancing Memory
Woudschoten Conference center, Zeist.
Host: Daniëlle van Versendaal (NIN) www.onwa.med.vu.nl
7 December 2009
Lecture by Fritjof Helmchen (Univ. Zürich, Switzerland)
Neuronal population responses revealed by in vivo two-photon
microscopy
Faculty building Erasmus MC Rotterdam, Room Ae 406.
Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience
Meibergdreef 47
1105 BA Amsterdam
The Netherlands
www.nin.knaw.nl
NIN is an institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) NIN News · issue 3 · June 2009